


The Lucas Disclosure

by jujubiest



Series: The Lucas Compendium [2]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, post-resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:48:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3923509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas is a lot more observant (and sneakier) than anyone at work--Henry especially--gives him credit for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucas Disclosure

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished watching the season one finale (I REFUSE to call it the series finale) and I want to cry as long as Adam has lived.

There was a dark blur at the edge of the water when his head broke the surface. As he swam nearer the shape resolved itself into a long, lanky frame clad in jeans and a sweater, a blue jacket, wide brown eyes in a pale, familiar face.

He dragged himself out of the water and accepted the towel he was offered wordlessly. They slipped through the darkness and into the car waiting only a short distance away, the engine still on and the heat running. Driver and passenger, doors shut and locked, the overhead light snuffed out, leaving them in near-darkness except for the lights of the city reflecting off the river. For a moment, neither man spoke.

“Lucas,” Adam said finally, his voice hoarser than usual, “what are you doing here?”

It took Lucas another half-minute to answer. When he spoke, his voice was softer than normal, and smaller. Devoid of the usual hangdog eagerness he’d seen displayed before Henry and the others. This was the man Adam suspected he alone got to see: quiet, thoughtful, honest. Hungry for affection and appreciation, yes...but loathe to ask for it, or else simply too unassuming to dare. Adam felt a dangerous little swell of affection, one of the many he found himself needing to tamp down on more and more often the longer he played this little game.

“A lot of things that happen around me don’t make sense lately, things with you and...things at work, with..um. And they kind of don’t make sense in the same way? So I did some reading...and I did some, uh, snooping.” He uttered this last with a chagrined look down at his lap, as though confessing something shameful.  _If only you knew how unfit I am to judge._

“So I followed you,” he continued, managing to sound apologetic and defensive at once. “And I followed...a few other clues, at--at work.” He seemed to find talking about work difficult, or dangerous. He switched gears in a hurry.

“Did you know that water carries a connotation of rebirth in dozens of world religions? Not just today, throughout time. Many ancient religions viewed water as not only purifying but life-giving--I mean, that makes sense from the whole drink-it-or-die perspective I guess, but I mean  _literally_ life-giving. Healing powers...the fountain of youth! Immor--”

“Lucas,” he interrupted. “You’re rambling.”

“Oh,” Lucas said. “Sorry. I guess I am.”

“It’s alright. I like it when you ramble. It’s...refreshingly unfiltered and honest.”

“Oh,” he said again, brightening. Then he seemed to have nothing else to say.

“There was also your name,” Lucas continued finally. “Ethan Durant. Literally means ‘enduring forever.’ That’s not your real name, is it?”

“No,” he chuckled, allowing himself the smallest twitch of a smile. “I left off using my true name a long time ago. It’s a bit antiquated, you see.”

“Unlike, say, ‘Henry?’” Lucas ventured. Adam’s jaw tightened involuntarily. Of course Lucas saw it--he missed so little--and hurried on.

“So the first time I saw you disappear, I freaked. It was an accident that time...I wasn’t trying to spy on you, I just sort of...happened to see.” He swallowed hard, his voice suddenly thick with emotion and his eyes shining suspiciously, as though recounting the memory was hard for him. Adam allowed himself to marvel a little at that.

“I thought you’d k--hurt yourself. And then you were just  _gone._ And I was afraid to say anything to anyone because I thought I was losing my mind. People don’t just disappear when they die! And then...you showed up at my door the next night for our date, like nothing had happened. So I started to wonder...where did you go when you disappeared?”

“Really?” Adam said, lightly mocking. “That was your first question? Not ‘how does my boyfriend come back from the dead?’”

“No,” Lucas snapped, voice uncharacteristically harsh. “My first question was ‘why does my boyfriend keep killing himself in his spare time?’”

He immediately looked embarrassed at the outburst, but Adam took it in stride. He didn’t expect Lucas to understand this. No one could who hadn’t lived it, seen the things he’d seen...died the deaths he had.

“When it proves impermanent, death becomes...novel. Fascinating.”

“Less scary?”

“No. Never that. I’m always afraid.”

“Then why do you keep doing it? What if...”

“What if I don’t come back one of these times?” Adam smiled again, but this time it had a bitter twist. “Would that I could even hope. You see, just as death becomes novel through its impermanence, so does life lose much of its novelty when you realize it’s truly forever.”

Lucas seemed not to know what to say to that at first.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said at last. “I know you’ve probably been around for, like, five hundred years or something--”

“Two thousand,” Adam interjected.

“Fine, two thousand years. Life’s old hat, I guess death’s probably boring too by now. But I’ve only been around a few decades and I’ve only known you a few months, and I really don’t want to end up standing out there for days, waiting and waiting for you to come out of the water.”

Adam reached up and turned on the light, squinting through the sudden brightness to look at Lucas,  _really_ look at him for the first time since he’d come out of the water to find him standing in wait with a towel and a warm car at the ready.

He looked paler than usual, and there were circles under his eyes. His face was drawn in tight lines of anxiety and maybe a little fear. But when he met them, they were as clear as ever. Not fear  _of_ him. Not fear of what he was.

“You were really worried about me,” Adam said, wonderingly.

“Of course I was worried about you! Who wouldn’t be worried about their boyfriend performing death experiments on himself in the middle of the night?!”

 _Boyfriend._ Such a plebeian, modern word. Infantile and banal. Adam hated it, but the sentiment behind it? He was getting dangerously attached to that.

“That’s the first time I haven’t had to say it for you,” he murmured. Lucas blushed to the roots of his hair, but he met Adam’s eyes without reservation.

He reached across the center console and ran a hand over Lucas’s cheek, up over his forehead and back through his hair. Lucas leaned into the touch like a cat, eyes drifting closed seemingly without his direction. Adam leaned in to press a gentle kiss to Lucas’s cheek.

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” he whispered. “And for the record, you can call me Adam.”


End file.
